[Tshu]

Hello everyone,
As you can see by my post count, I'm fairly new to this forum. As a Silver Protoss, I was hoping to find myself some standard PvT and PvP build orders and their relative timings and transitions. It's not that I experience trouble with these matchups but something more along the lines of getting to know what is standard so I can others like myself improve.

Note: Please don't me stuff like "Oh hey, look you're in Silver Learn to Macro and just wing it"

Thanks ^^

Replays
http://drop.sc/151455 - First game of the day, played kinda sloppy 1 Gate Expand but messed up due to a supply block so I kinda improvised from there onwards - some tiny things forgotten included templer at 3rd & 2nd, blink and such
http://drop.sc/151456 - Gas stealing once in a while however I do usually lose to golds PvP - next match he proxied 2 gate and I wasn't able to hold

[mGGAequitas]

Originally Posted by Tshu

Oh hey, look you're in Silver Learn to Macro and just wing it

^ this exactly. i'm high diamond and still do that.

If you macro well and know approximately what you want the "builds" that people use will just fall into place.

+ [Macro rules] +

1. constantly make probes (chornoboost them as much as you can too)
2. don't get supply blocked

+ [supply] +

general rule is once a base is up and running you will need another pylon just after the next one finishes, so on two bases you need to build two once the previous two have finished/or start the next pylon when the previous one is half way done) note this is just general timing and if you do it perfectly you will end up with too much free supply.

3. spend your money
4. constantly produce units
5. expand at reasonable times

+ [expanding] +

the general rule here is to expand after 3 production buildings and one piece of tech. so like 3 gates and core then expand, another 2 gates, a robo and robobay then expand, etc. Once you have 3 bases you want to expand once you start running out of minerals at your main. Again this is just general guidelines you can get like double forges after your expand as well and it will still be fine.

i'd also like to point out that in some situations some of these rules won't apply such as if you are doing a fast expand you may want to cut probes and you also won't be wanting 3 production buildings. As well as if you are facing an all in/cheese or want to cheese/all in your self. Remember that the 'rules' above are merely guidelines, but if you follow them you should improve quite a lot and also you will pick up when it is acceptable to break the rules.

The next most important thing is your mechanics, that's basically how you use the mouse and more importantly keyboard.

+ [Keyboard Mechanics] +

+ [Command hotkeys] +

Command hotkeys, or just hotkeys for short, are the letters that you need to push to give a command to a unit such as 'b' 'e' to build a pylon, 's' to build a stalker, etc. Basically all the buttons in the box at the bottom right of your screen when ingame. The only reason to ever click there is to set/remove autocasting off a spell (or maybe there is a way to do this on the keyboard but I don't know about it). If you don't know or have forgetton the key for one of the commands either move your mouse over the picture and read the tooltip, or in options check "enable command hotkey text" this will put a little letter over the picture so you can simply look to see what the letter is and then push it on the keyboard.
In summary -> don't ever click on the commands

+ [Control groups] +

Control groups are assigned by pushing control+1 through to control + 0, using control will remove all the units you already have in the control group and create a new group with only what you had selected.
If you only want to add a couple of units/buildings to a control group you can push shift+1 through to 0. This is useful for when you warp in a unit, you can simply select it and push shift 1 to add it to your army control group (assuming you use 1 for your army).

Control groups are essential to winning games; it allows you to do a lot more in much less time, it is vital that anything you will need to select several times is in a control group, things like -> scouting workers/units (it's much faster to push 33 and then move the worker than to move the mouse to the minimap, try and click exactly on where your scout is, box your scout and then try and run away from the unit attacking you(most likely the unit will have died by this time.))

+ [my control group setup] +

1 - entire army (some units such as sentries go in 2 as well) (remember as soon as you warp in or make a unit otherwise, select it and shift 1, you don't want to be missing units when you attack or whatever)
2 - spell casters (sentries early game and when I get ht's i leave sentries in 1 only and put the hts only in 2 because if i were to 1a and the hts were in 1 as well as 2 they would run to the front of the battle since they have no attack.)
3 - early game - scout worker, later on - air units (pheonix vikings, carriers, warp prism)
4 - production buildings (i usually put just the robo and stargate on here (you can swap between making from either building by pushing tab) since warp gates get their own control group, unless I am doing some sort of pre-warpgate agression)
5 - go all my nexuses (nexi?) - it's a lot eaiser to push 5eeeeee than to select each nexus and build a worker from it, or 5c click c click c click)
6-0 - Things like forges, observers, proxy pylons (faster to warp in during a battle -> 88wssssss11 for example) and any other random things you may need access to quickly.

+ [camera regions] +

the last mechanic i would like to mention are the screen regions (i remapped them to control f1-f4)
i generally only use the first 3 at my main, natural and third. It is quite helpful to use these screen regions to quickly look at a particular base. for example -> you go to expand, you can select a probe push f2 bn click f1 shift click and you have quickly built an expansion and told the worker to go back to mining. Another example is banshees/mutas/hellions/reapers etc. in your main base you can push f1 1a click box your workers f2 click. and you have quickly sent your army to deal with the harass as well as saved your workers from too much damage.

Secret to winning:

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Bazinga!

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Complements of Cabracan

Quick Comments

	syfCabracan:	Antici
	faithHunter:	This post deserves its own thread.
	Feddonator:

[syfCabracan]

Try finding the relevant day9 daily. Always great infomation there.

[Crankenstein]

For a lot of people learning to macro is learning a build and executing it repeatedly until they can macro properly. This is what I used to do. The Select 2 medivac timing in TvP and the 3 tank push in TvZ served me well from silver to platinum. I don't think it's your place to tell them that their learning style is wrong (Also, It's how day9 advocates learning how to play).

For TvP I think that the best build you can do from the perspective of learning how to macro is the following: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft...to_3_Gate_Robo. I don't think that this is the best build for the match-up but it will definitely give you lots of practice with macroing and developing game sense. With 3 early gateways you are going to have to constantly produce probes in order to aford to build anything out of them and you are going to have to constantly build pylons or you will be supply blocked after a single round of warp ins. This should serve you very well for a very long time.

I'm a Terran so I won't pretend to know anything about your other match ups, but hopefully this gives you an idea of where to start.

[mGGAequitas]

i don't think cabracan means this:

You Tube

You Tube

as well as the next two (257 and 261)

but these 3 videos are INSANELY good for learning the foundations, i've probably watched each of them 3 times and they helped me so much.

[mGGAequitas]

crankenstein I have to disagree with you, because there is no point in doing a 15 nexus or 1gate fe or 3gate expand or any other build. if they don't understand WHY they should do it, what does their scouting information tell them about how they should react. This gamesense is gained by playing lots of games and analysing the replays -> from your point of view with what you scouted guess what they were doing and then go to all view and see how much of what they had.

Another reason for not learning exact builds is because if you miss a chrono or delay putting a building down, or miss some probes you can just straight up die and you may think it's the build that loses to what your opponent be but it was actually a macro fault of yours.
This is why i just said the basic rules to standard builds such as 3 gate expand, 2gate robo expand, etc because these builds are quite safe and even if your macro is a bit off you won't outright lose to anything.

[Crankenstein]

If you look the build I suggested is a 3 gate expand into robo. I wasn't suggesting an intricate and complicated build like the HuK 20 food expand. He understands why he is doing it: It's a good standard safe build that he can do to learn to macro with.

Starting with a good solid build like a 3 gate expand is a much better platform to learn from for most people instead of just winging it because they can track their performance across games.

If you just wing it and build whatever.... it get's harder to assess your own play. If you just wing it you end up in situations where you have 4 void rays a collosus and 2 zealots and wonder why you die.

I see nothing wrong with a low level player asking for a good safe standard build that they can use to practice.

[Jaywalk]

if you do feel like trying something more complex, http://scdojo.tumblr.com/ is an excellent resource for builds.

Quick Comments

x5_Bard:

OI! This is my secret lol xD

[Tshu]

lol I do use artosis's blog from time to time, for PvP I feel that the meta game has shifted slightly from 3 stalker rush into fast blink/obs and depending on what the opponent does an allin or your own expansion is build and in PvT the 1 gate expand creator.prime style seems extremely vulnerable to all-ins. So therefore I am unsure of what to do. I feel comfortable with PvZ because they haven't gotten good enough to hold my zealot voidray pressure or 7 gate +2 blink all in :L

I'll try and ladder tommorrow and post some replays for some analysis

[ToRFutureBoy]

I'm high silver and have been working on a 4 gate build, which has worked well foe me. To be honest at our level things like always building workers and pylons is pretty important until it's second nature.
My 4 gate is far from perfect but it's getting there. I can win a lot of games with it. For a PvP though I prefer a 2 or 3 gate robo, and us toss players love our stalkers so some immortals in the mix will kill them.
Let me know if you want to practice. FutureBoy.308, I'm on SEA

[SanG]

depends on ur style, whether u wanna follow the trend of "1 gate expo" or u could also try 2 gate robo, which is a very safe build.

[Tshu]

some replays added, I'll get to ladder alot more in the holidays.